Frank Rich Is Rich

This past weekend, Jenna Bush was married quietly back at the Crawford ranch. The colors for the bridesmaid's dresses were chosen from Texas wildflowers. Sweet.

Republicans were stunned by their loss of a House seat in red, red Mississippi to Democrat, Travis Childers.

In his opinion column at the New York Times, Rich says:

[Republican] Party leaders have been haplessly trying to identify possible remedies ever since. It didn’t help that their recent stab at an Obamaesque national Congressional campaign slogan, “The Change You Deserve,” was humiliatingly identified as the advertising pitch for the anti-depressant Effexor. (If they’re going to go the pharmaceutical route, “Viva Viagra” might be more to the point.)

Yes!

In the election for the Mississippi house seat, the Republicans went all out against Childers, throwing everything at him but the kitchen stove.

The G.O.P. didn’t merely step up its expensive negative campaign, attempting to take down Mr. Childers (who is a white, conservative Democrat) by linking him with Mr. Obama, a ranting Rev. Jeremiah Wright and Nancy Pelosi. It also brought in the party’s big guns. Mr. Bush and Mr. McCain recorded mass phone pitches for Mr. Davis. Karl Rove and Mr. Cheney campaigned for him.

Surely they knew that Cheney was better left in his undisclosed location.

The vice president’s visit was last Monday, the centerpiece of a get-out-the-vote rally in DeSoto County, a G.O.P. stronghold. “We’ll put our shoulders to the wheel for John McCain,” the vice president promised as he bestowed his benediction on Mr. Davis. Well, he got out the vote all right. In the election results the next day, the Childers total in DeSoto County increased 142 percent, while the Davis count went up only 47 percent.

Note to Republican candidates: you don't want Cheney's shoulders on your wheel.

Rich goes on to write about how tough it will be for McCain and the other Republican candidates to distance themselves from the Bush administration and its disastrous policies, which they supported whole-heartedly.

Hard as it is for Mr. McCain to run from the Bush policies he supports, it will be far harder to escape from Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney themselves. When Mr. McCain accepted Mr. Bush’s endorsement at the White House in March, he referred three times to the president’s “busy schedule,” as if wishing aloud that the lame-duck incumbent would have no time to appear at, say, get-out-the-vote rallies. Alas, Mr. Bush and company are not going gently into retirement.

Read the whole column. There are many more juicy bits on both parties that you won't want to miss.